Curiosities
by SiriusMarauderFan
Summary: On vacation in Europe, Annabeth stumbles across a world of magic.


**Author's Note: **Written for…

A Demigod Wizard's Duel at the Hunger Games Competition. _Task:_ Write a crossover between HP and either THG or PJ. A character in your story must lose their way/get lost. _Prompts:_ Valentine's Day, locket, and tea.

**Curiosities**

Annabeth tapped her foot impatiently, her eyes never leaving the clock hanging above her head. One hand tightly gripped the handle of her bag while the other traced the outline of her owl-shaped locket – a Valentine's Day gift from Percy.

She sighed. It'd been three weeks since she saw her boyfriend, and she wished he could've been able to come with her on her trip across Europe. But her dad and stepmom were putting up a lot of money to send her on the trip as it was, and there was no way Sally and Phil could do the same for Percy.

The timer on her watch beeped and she shut it off, heading for platform ten, where her train for Scotland was supposed to be waiting for her. A bird's screeching made her head turn, and she saw a small girl with a caged owl and a large trunk.

Annabeth looked around carefully, wondering if anyone else had noticed. There were a few people giving the girl strange looks, but mostly everyone ignored her. Was this an odd English thing? Were owls allowed as pets? Annabeth shook her head and moved on. It wasn't the strangest thing she'd ever seen.

But she couldn't get the girl out of her mind, particularly since they were going in the same direction. Annabeth waited at platform ten for the train to empty, and she couldn't help herself from watching the peculiar girl, who seemed to know exactly where she was going, but wasn't stopping at either platforms nine or ten, but rather rushing straight at the barrier between them.

The American took a few steps forward, about to warn the girl to watch out for the brick wall, but she had disappeared before Annabeth could open her mouth.

She shook her head roughly and blinked a couple of times, but the girl was gone. She wheeled her luggage over to the barrier and tentatively touched the brick. Was the Mist playing tricks on her? She pressed on the wall but nothing happened.

"If you're not getting on the platform, get out of the way," said a snide voice behind her. Annabeth turned and apologized to the man. He had a teenage son just a bit younger than herself. He was pushing a cart with a large trunk and a caged owl as well.

She stepped aside, but didn't take her eyes off them as they ran for the wall and disappeared right through it.

They were boarding her train. She should've gone and enjoyed the rest of her vacation, but there was something very wrong about all this, and Annabeth couldn't help herself.

Making sure she had a good grip on her luggage, she took a running start at the wall, closing her eyes as she got closer – waiting for the impact. But it never came. When she opened her eyes she was standing on another platform. The sign above her read Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters.

There were people rushing about all round her – most of them with owls, but some with cats and toads and rats, and she thought maybe this was some sort of monster's convention. The train they were all boarding didn't help matters – what on earth was a hogwart?

"Ticket?" She jumped, not expecting anyone to be paying her any attention, but the porter had snuck up on her.

"I'm sorry?"

"If you want to board the train, you'll need a ticket, Miss."

"Oh," she said dumbly, and made a show of checking her pockets. "Um. I must have misplaced it."

"No ticket, no going to Hogwarts," he said smugly. She had the strong urge to punch him. He couldn't have been much older than her.

"Just, um, give me a minute to find it."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Are you American?"

"Yes?"

He scoffed, walking away and muttering to himself. "Letting exchange students in now."

'Students?' Annabeth wondered to herself. As she looked around, she realized that only children and teenagers were boarding the train. 'A school for young monsters?'

She groaned. She was lost – completely out of her depths – but she couldn't just let this go. This needed investigating. So she discreetly unzipped her bag and pulled out her Yankees cap and put it on, turning invisible.

She waited for the perfect moment, when the porter was distracted with helping a kid with his luggage, to slip on board. She stalked along the corridor, peeking into open compartments and catching snippets of conversations between students eating pastries and sipping tea.

"Did you hear that Harry Potter got married?"

"-Can't believe the Harpies won the World Cup!"

"Oh, she's _such_ a Slytherin."

None of it made any sense to her. These kids didn't seem to be monsters, but they certainly weren't demigods either … were they?

Finally she stumbled upon an empty compartment and took the opportunity to take the hat off and maybe mingle a little.

"Cool trick!" said a voice from the doorway. Annabeth spun around, horrified that she'd let herself be seen reappearing.

The girl in the doorway didn't seem to be ready to attack though. In fact, she seemed pretty excited.

"I haven't learned any invisibility spells yet, but my uncle uses them all the time to hide his sweets from us. Are you a seventh year? I'm going into sixth. What house are you in? I'm Hufflepuff, but my mum says I'm so clever I should've been in Ravenclaw," the girl rambled on.

"_What?_" Annabeth wasn't used to not understanding something, and she was pretty sure Percy would be laughing at her right now, but the girl was talking way too fast to make sense of her words.

The girl bit her lip. "Do you want to see something really cool? I don't think we're allowed to do magic on the train, but you won't tell, will you?"

"Magic?"

The girl pulled out a long black stick from her back pocket and waved it around a bit and said some words that Annabeth thought might've been ancient Greek except that she didn't understand a word of it.

The stick was pointed at one of the two long benches in the compartment, and suddenly the upholstery was turning a bright green before Annabeth's eyes.

It was about that moment she knew she was in the wrong world.


End file.
